A retired police officer claims he saw a UFO over Holmfirth – and a renowned investigator has captured footage on video.

The former policeman reported seeing a triangular-shaped craft which glowed green in the night sky.

The Penistone-based former officer spotted a “large group of lights” on the horizon towards Holmfirth at 8.50pm on Thursday.

He grabbed a pair of binoculars to get a closer look and described a three-sided isosceles triangle-shaped craft with rows of red lights on the side that appeared to flash at random.

The man immediately alerted Scholes-based UFO investigator Gary Heseltine who went to a vantage point above Holmfirth and filmed what he believes is the same craft.

Gary, 56, set up a night vision camera on a tripod linked to his laptop but after just two minutes of filming his laptop battery suddenly drained forcing him to return home to charge it.

A retired police officer's sketch of a triangular-shaped UFO he reported seeing in the night sky above Holmfirth on October 6, 2016. The image was given to UFO expert Gary Heseltine.

The retired officer doesn’t want to reveal his identity but Gary said: “This man is a very credible witness and I checked out his background two years ago when he came to me with a previous sighting which occurred 25 years ago while he was a serving officer.

“He did absolutely the right thing in contacting me straightaway to get corroboration. He rang me and I went to see for myself, though I was looking at it from a different direction from him in Penistone.

“What I saw was a very bright light, which was not a star. The object was not moving and was dim at first but then flared up. In my experience of looking at hundreds of sightings this was very unusual.”

Gary is known as one of the UK’s leading ufologists. A detective with British Transport Police for 20 years, Gary quit the force in 2013 to launch his own online publication UFO Truth Magazine.

While still a serving officer he set up a national police database of UFO sightings and has catalogued hundreds of sightings.

Gary has organised an annual UFO conference in Holmfirth for the last four years. Special guest at last month’s sell-out conference was alien abductee Travis Walton, a logger from Arizona, who went missing for five days in November, 1975.

Gary is convinced that UFOs are real and says there is “overwhelming evidence that ET is here and has been for many years.”

In his report Gary described what the man saw and said: “Using the binoculars he observed the lights which appeared to be predominantly red and green with possibly some white light as well. All the lights appeared to be blinking.

“Whilst still observing the craft it appeared to tilt forward on its axis and at this stage he could clearly see that the craft was an isosceles triangle shape, all three sides of which appeared to be continuous green – almost neon – light. Running down the inside of the two longest sides were rows of red lights. “These red lights also appeared to run down centre of the dark bodied craft and along the back. These red lights linked on and off in what appeared to be a random manner.”